Adequate darkness leads to empathy and realism amid life's unpredictability.

Adequate light fosters biophilia, inspiration, and a united worldview.

Embracing darkness and light nurtures personal growth and maturity.

I have appreciated the thinking that the psyche has two purposes: survival and wholeness. The former needs no explanation, but wholeness can easily fall into an unnamed abstraction. One consideration when exploring wholeness is to view life from the perspectives of darkness and light. The mythologist Michael Meade asks, “Are you adequately darkened?” I offer the question, “Are you adequately lightened?” Our inquiry examines what it means to be “adequately darkened” and “adequately lightened.”

An individual could be darkened or adequately darkened. If you are simply darkened, it likely means that you don’t carry enough light in order to carry the darkness without shame, cynicism, guilt, aggression, or contempt. Some expressions of darkness include loss, trauma, defeat, insecurity, betrayal, isolation, and melancholy. Adequately darkened also entails doing the work necessary to hold the darkness as not simply unfortunate, but also as a significant expression of real life. We then allow the darkness to bring attention to what truly........

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